If you read nothing else this week, read this. In a very long, detailed, and, when you think about it, frightening account of the months leading to and following the American national balloting of November 2020, Molly Ball describes the ceaseless labor of a small cadre of election specialists, the unprecedented partnerships of AFL-CIO and the Chamber of Commerce, Move On and principled conservatives, and the many, many eyes-of-the-needle through which little-known heroes like Mike Podhorzer, Amber McReynolds and Maurice Mitchell accurately and with immense dedication guided our American experiment in democracy.
She begins with a surprising historical fact:
A weird thing happened right after the Nov. 3 election: nothing.
The nation was braced for chaos. Liberal groups had vowed to take to the streets, planning hundreds of protests across the country. Right-wing militias were girding for battle. In a poll before Election Day, 75% of Americans voiced concern about violence.
Instead, an eerie quiet descended. As President Trump refused to concede, the response was not mass action but crickets.
She ends with this caution:
As I was reporting this article in November and December, I heard different claims about who should get the credit for thwarting Trump's plot. Liberals argued the role of bottom-up people power shouldn't be overlooked, particularly the contributions of people of color and local grassroots activists. Others stressed the heroism of GOP officials like Van Langeveld and Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, who stood up to Trump at considerable cost. The truth is that neither likely could have succeeded without the other. " It's astounding how close we came, how fragile all this really is," says Timmer, the former Michigan GOP chair. " It's like when Wile E. Coyote runs off the cliff - if you don't look down, you don't fall. Our democracy only survives if we all believe and don't look down."
Democracy won in the end. The will of the people prevailed. But it's crazy, in retrospect, that this is what it took to put on an election in the United States of America.
Between those two passages is the story of what the author calls "a vast campaign to protect the election." If you can access it and read it, please do. Because we are very likely to have to mount another campaign just like it in a year or two.